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If the original X-Men are between 30 and 35 years old, then Tony Stark and Reed Richards have an average of 50s.
Xavier is 70 years old.
Remember, characters are not allowed to grow old.

Xavier is soooo much younger than that. I think the movies have skewed everyone's perceptions of him. Morrison had him at 41 when he was dying, which sounds about right. He finished college extremely early and was already doing post-doctorate studies in his early 20's with Moira. In X-Men #1 he says his parents worked on the first atom bomb which is why he was a mutant. In 1963, that's only 18 years after the first bomb. We can skew to 25 years if we go back to the first theoretical science of the atom in 1938. I would fudge him a little older, at about 30 or so, in X-Men 1, and put him in the war with Cain around 20/21, which was 10 years before #1 per the earliest Juggernaut stories. If he was about 20/21 when he left the war, that also lines him up nicely for being about 41 in Morrison's run because he sired Legion about '20 years ago' from the mid 90's AoA.

I think the original X-Men are barely 30. I'm not sure how old Tony or Reed were depicted in their earliest appearances. I know Reed is a solid decade or so older than Sue, and Sue is a little older than Johnny, who should be about the same age as the O5/Spidey. That said, when the FF just returned, they specifically aged a whole 5 years adventuring in the multiverse, so Reed/Sue/Franklin/Valeria are now 5 extra years older than Ben/Johnny et al.

Xavier is soooo much younger than that. I think the movies have skewed everyone's perceptions of him. Morrison had him at 41 when he was dying, which sounds about right. He finished college extremely early and was already doing post-doctorate studies in his early 20's with Moira. In X-Men #1 he says his parents worked on the first atom bomb which is why he was a mutant. In 1963, that's only 18 years after the first bomb. We can skew to 25 years if we go back to the first theoretical science of the atom in 1938. I would fudge him a little older, at about 30 or so, in X-Men 1, and put him in the war with Cain around 20/21, which was 10 years before #1 per the earliest Juggernaut stories. If he was about 20/21 when he left the war, that also lines him up nicely for being about 41 in Morrison's run because he sired Legion about '20 years ago' from the mid 90's AoA.

I think the original X-Men are barely 30. I'm not sure how old Tony or Reed were depicted in their earliest appearances. I know Reed is a solid decade or so older than Sue, and Sue is a little older than Johnny, who should be about the same age as the O5/Spidey. That said, when the FF just returned, they specifically aged a whole 5 years adventuring in the multiverse, so Reed/Sue/Franklin/Valeria are now 5 extra years older than Ben/Johnny et al.

I dont think the movies are to blame. He always came across as older to me as a kid, way before the movies were a thing. I think its the fact that he and Magneto have always been portrayed as peers in all forms of media did that as Magneto tends to be an old man. I believe he was supposed to be the same age as Banshee and Banshee was a man in his mid 40s when introduced

If the original X-Men are between 30 and 35 years old, then Tony Stark and Reed Richards have an average of 50s.
Xavier is 70 years old.
Remember, characters are not allowed to grow old.

Reed always looks like he's closer to his mid-to-late 40s, so 50s doesn't sound that bad, especially given his age in comparison to Franklin and Sue. Those streaks of gray really do it -- he was already gray when Franklin was born, and if Sue is supposed to be a decade younger than him, then she still needs to be of legal age to date him in the first place in time for the rocket flight.

But I don't recall Tony and Reed ever being the same age, though that could be because of Tony's own playboy rep. But I'd always thought of Stark/Pym/Banner as between Spidey/O5 X-Men and Richards, then Xavier/Magneto.

I'd also say we can consider that in the 60s pop culture, older/middle aged heroes were more common than today (which, tangentially, explains why Alex Ross paints every male hero in their mid-30s to mid-40s). Race Bannon, Captain Murphy, The Chief from Doom Patrol, Fury, etc. After that, the hero market started skewing younger until Cable would be one of the rare exceptions. That's not to say the 05 X-Men will reach middle age anytime soon, but also that mid-30s ain't middle aged.

Characters are not allowed to grow old, but they can still grow. Yes, that's why we have the sliding scale and retcons, but clearly in-story characters since the 60s are older narratively than their debuts.

I'm not arguing that ages can't vary or that they can't be inconsistent; these are comics, after all, and as Grey Lensman said above, they can be in their 30s in one issue and 27 in the next. That's not to say that they can't be younger than that tomorrow if Marvel so chooses. But what I'm saying is that mid-30s to late-30s (a mere 5 years) isn't out of the realm of possibility for the X-Men, and Bendis and Waid seemed to interpret their ages that way by having the time-displaced 05 X-Men use 90s references. We're all talking as if the age of 38 is retirement age with broken hips and AARP.

I dont think the movies are to blame. He always came across as older to me as a kid, way before the movies were a thing. I think its the fact that he and Magneto have always been portrayed as peers in all forms of media did that as Magneto tends to be an old man. I believe he was supposed to be the same age as Banshee and Banshee was a man in his mid 40s when introduced

I agree Xavier should be close to Sean and Moira, who should be just old enough to have teenaged/20 year old children born when they were young themselves. But not 70 years old like CuteClops said. Patrick Stewart is 78 now, and was 60 when X1 came out. That's why I think many people think Xavier is older than he really is. I would put him at early to mid 40's at present, and in Fantomex's body, he probably shaved a few years off to appear even younger.

On a side note for anyone interested, Emma explicitly states her age as 27 way back in New X-Men under Morrison (with no reason to lie -- I believe she was yelling at students who thought she was older). I'm not sure if she's the same age as the original X-Men (I believe she watched a news report on them as a teen, which would make her just a couple years younger than them, but that's rarely been referenced), but Morrison was also 15 years ago IRL. And so much has happened since then.

Also, back to Reed, Franklin's a teenager now, about 15 or 16 according to the latest FF book. Yes, the team underwent a time-jump of 5 years separate from Marvel Earth, but even if Reed had Franklin in his mid-30s (and Reed looked older than that at his birth), then he would indeed be in his 50s by now.

I see Iceman as the last of the 05 to be in his 20s (I see him as a gay man who came out of the closet almost as a 30 years old)
so Iceman would be the youngest one at 29, and Beast should be like 33. Scott in between. And Jean now belongs to the generation of Kitty Pryde because of all the time she was dead.
Scott must have been like 30 or 31 when he died.

Reed and Sue are around the same age when they meet in college. The weird John Byrne love at first sight between a 12 year-old and a college student thing is gone now. Reed is the same age as the rest of the Marvel heroes plus five. His gray streaks were supposed to indicate that he was older because of WWII, an element that's been gone for far longer. They're just what he looks like and it never changes. He took a cosmic radiation bath, if you need a new explanantion. But like everyone else, he's been moved to start in his early 20's. Soooo not yet 40.

I'm sure yes, but recently Jordan commented on Twitter something interesting. Said that Giant Sized X-Men took place approximately 8 or 9 years ago in Marvel time. So perhaps that snark isn't too far off from the truth?